This is the staging instance of ATR, for testing only. The production server is at releases.apache.org.

5.2. Vote phase

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Overview

The vote phase is where the PMC decides, as an act of the Foundation, whether the Release Candidate should become a release. Once the Release Manager is satisfied with the composed candidate they start a vote, and the PMC votes to approve it or not. The artifacts being voted on stay in ATR for the duration of the vote, so the vote email can link to them directly and every voter reviews the same thing. A vote may be canceled and restarted if a problem comes to light. Once a vote passes, the candidate is ready to publish in the finish phase.

For a step by step walkthrough of this phase with screenshots, see the Vote section of the tutorial. The tutorial follows a release by a top level project, with the vote held on a mailing list. A podling release is voted on twice, as described in Podling releases.

Responsibilities

Both the Release Manager and the wider PMC have a part to play in this phase:

  • The Release Manager starts the vote, links to the artifacts under vote, and, when the vote is over, tallies the result and resolves it.
  • PMC members review the candidate and cast their votes on the vote thread. Whose votes are binding is a matter of ASF policy.

Casting and resolving the vote

ATR keeps the candidate and its artifacts staged for the whole of the vote, and tallies the votes from the vote thread on the mailing list. The tally is there to help, but the Release Manager must check it against the thread before relying on it. When the vote is complete the Release Manager resolves it: a passing vote moves the candidate on to the finish phase, and a failed or canceled vote returns it to compose so that it can be revised. When starting the vote, the Release Manager can also ask ATR to publish the release automatically once the vote resolves successfully, as described in Promoting to release. See Staging and voting for how staging, vote emails, and resolution work in ATR.